


pilot

by orphan_account



Series: novakshield's supernatural: the series [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 1x01, A concept, Baby Sam Winchester, Baby Winchesters, Chuck's POV, F/M, Pilot Episode, Protective Dean Winchester, Winchester Brothers - Freeform, samjess - Freeform, spinoff series, unedited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25187986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Two brothers, Dean and Sam Winchester, go in search of their father, who disappeared hunting the same thing that killed their mother 22 years ago.I wanted to write the books from Chuck's perspective so this is just a little project. Enjoy!
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester
Series: novakshield's supernatural: the series [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824664
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	pilot

**Author's Note:**

> hey, guys!  
> this is novakshields (yes i changed my name) and I wanted to write a supernatural book series based on chuck writing the books in the actual show. i won't do all the episodes in order so let me know what you want to see next! I'm planning on writing 6x20 'the man who would be king' because it seems like a 1st person pov kind of story, which sounds fun!  
> i do not own this story or the dialogues in it, I can only take credit for the elaborated events in the writing. all credits go to eric kripke and the supernatural team!  
> (although I did take some liberties with the dialogue)

PILOT

LAWRENCE, KANSAS 

1983

The moon hangs low and large, covered up by the clouds that drape themselves across the night sky. Crickets chirp softly outside of the small house, with its creamy white paint and quaint porch. A single tree stands next to it as if it were protecting the family that lived there. Inside, the floor creaks softly under the woman’s feet, the soft pad of her footsteps muffled by the carpet that covered the corridor. She holds a young boy in her arms and carries him into a dark room.

“C’mon, let’s say goodnight to your brother,” the woman says to the boy in a hushed tone.

The woman turns on a lamp, making the room glow with warm rays of golden light. In the middle of the room, there’s a crib. It is furnished with downy white blankets. Inside the crib, a baby is staring up at the ceiling, which is decorated with a baseball mobile. Slowly, the woman lets the boy in her arms to the floor; he immediately moves towards the crib, where the infant lies, undisturbed. The older boy leans over the side of the crib and places a small, dainty kiss on the baby’s forehead. The boy smiles.

“‘Night, Sam,” the boy says, his voice small and tender. He pulls back from the crib. 

Now the woman moves to lean over the side of the crib. She gazes down at the baby and smiles softly, her golden curls falling forward to frame her young, kind face. “Good night, love,” she says and brushes the baby’s hair away from his forehead to place another kiss there. She pulls back as well.

“Hey, Dean.”

The boy turns to a man in the doorway, who dons a USMC t-shirt and smiles softly down at the boy. He rushes over to the older man, who scoops his son up in his arms. 

“Daddy!” the boy -Dean- cries out, his innocent voice high-pitched and excited.

“Hey, buddy,” the man chuckles, grinning widely at his child. “So, what do you think? Sammy ready to toss around a football yet?”

This brings a laugh out of the boy. He giggles and shakes his head, smiling. “No, Daddy.”

His father laughs. “No,” he says, and touches his son’s cheek with light fingers.

His wife passes him, stopping momentarily to look back at her husband and older son. “You got him?” she asks her husband.

Her husband smiles and hugs his son closer to him before turning back towards the baby’s crib. “Sweet dreams, Sammy,” he says softly, and then carries his other son out of the room, turning off the lights as he goes. The infant watches them leave, gurgling quietly. He reaches for his toes.

Above the crib, the baseball mobile begins to spin slowly. The baby watches it, mesmerized. On the wall across from the window, the clock with a car on it ticks once, then twice, and then stops, plunging the room into a deadly silence. A night light plugged into a wall socket flickers and goes out. 

Inside the master bedroom, lights flicker on the baby monitor that rests on the nightstand, next to the picture of the woman and her husband. The woman in question lies in bed, fast asleep until noises begin to filter through the baby monitor. She rises, disturbed, and turns on the lamp that sits on the nightstand. 

“John?” The woman looks around her, but her husband isn’t in the room; she is alone. Rising slowly, she walks down the corridor towards the nursery, where her husband, a ghostly silhouette framed by the moonlight, stands, watching over the crib. “John? Is he hungry?”

Her husband turns his head towards her slowly and then puts a finger up to his mouth. “Shh,” he whispers, and his wife nods.

“Alright,” she says, and leaves the nursery. The woman walks back down the hallway when she sees the light by the stairs flickering, disturbed. Curious, she goes to poke at it until it turns off. She frowns, confused. Out of the corner of her eye, the woman sees the same flickering light coming from downstairs. She goes to investigate, only to find her husband sprawled out along the couch, asleep. An old war movie plays on the television.

The woman gasps, realization hitting her with a brute force. She darts back up the stairs, floorboards creaking heavily. 

“Sammy! Sammy!” she calls out for her son, and dashes into his nursery; then she freezes.

In the living room, her husband wakes to the screams of a woman. He startles and turns around to face the stairs.

“Mary?” he says, but there is no response. He nearly falls out of the chair and calls again, more urgently. When there is still no response, he too sprints up the stairs, less gracefully. The man swings open the nursery door, only to find his infant son still lying in his crib, wide awake. The father looks around warily and then pushes the hinge of his son’s crib down.

“Hey, Sammy,” he says gently. “You okay?”

Something drips and lands next to the baby; his father reaches out to touch it. He observes the liquid on his fingers. Blood.

The man looks up and screams in horror. His wife is held up against the ceiling, spread-eagled, and struggling for breath. Her wheat-colored hair is coated with blood and tangled. Dark red blood spreads slowly across her stomach, dripping onto the floor and staining the front of her ghostly white nightgown. The man collapses to the floor, eyes wide in terror at the sight of his wife. He shouts her name once.

And then she bursts into flames, hot and orange, and licking their way across the ceiling. Inside the crib, the baby wails. His father turns towards him, still in shock, and scoops him up before running out of the nursery. 

Now the older boy comes to investigate, his little feet carrying him out of his bedroom and into the hallway. “Daddy!” he screams with his little throat as his father comes hurtling towards him, other son still in his hands. The man shoves the baby at his older brother. 

“Take your brother outside as fast as you can and don’t look back!” The child attempts a weak protest, but the older man takes charge. “Now, Dean, go!”

The boy turns and runs down the stairs, holding his infant brother in his hand. The baby gurgles weakly. 

“Mary!” the man calls and turns to the nursery. But the entire room is smothered in golden-yellow flames, lapping at the outside of the door. There’s no sign of the woman, no sound other than the crackling of the fire. “No!”

Outside the house the boy clutches his baby brother, holding him tight to his chest. “It’s okay, Sammy,” he whispers into the infant’s ear. The boy turns to look up at the window of the nursery, where the curtains have been pulled back. He can clearly see the flames swirling and circling around something inside now. The kid takes a step back.

Their father runs outside to meet them, scooping both of his sons up and gripping them with firm hands. He carries them away from the house, no turning back. “I gotcha,” he whispers to his boys and the window of the nursery breaks, fire bursting out of it. 

Later that night the fire department arrives in their big red truck with hoses and gear. They grab their hoses and begin to spray at the window of the nursery, talking in loud voices to each other. An ambulance arrives as well, a few paramedics filing out of it.

The fire has gotten the neighbors’ attention as well because they stream out of their houses curiously, watching the nursery burn. An officer waves the crowd back. “Stay back,” he tells them. “You have to stay back.”

Across the street from the burning house, the father sits on the hood of his Impala, his older boy sitting next to him. In the man’s arms is the baby, silent as a mouse. He makes no noise. None of them do. 

The man looks up at the aftermath of the fire.

* * *

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

2005

“Sam!” Jess enters from around the corner, wearing an over-sexualized nurse costume. She fixes her little hat, wearing it so that it brings out her curly yellow hair. “Get a move-on, would you? We were supposed to be there, like, fifteen minutes ago.”

Sam doesn’t respond. Jess walks towards the music blasting from somewhere in the apartment, calling out again. “Sam? You coming or what?”

Sam pokes his head around the corner. He didn’t dress for Halloween. Instead, he chose to wear three shirts and worn-out jeans. “Do I have to?” he complains, knowing that Jess won’t change her mind.

“Yes!” Jess insists, putting her hands on her hips. “It’ll be fun.”

Sighing, Sam enters the room. Jess gives him an amused once-over.

“Where’s your costume?” she asks him, one side of her full lips quirking up. 

Sam laughs and ducks his head, embarrassed. “You know how I feel about Halloween, Jess.”

* * *

The bar is decorated with corny spooky ornaments, including a gargoyle and a cowboy hat with some choice words on it. Music blares from over the speakers, almost at a deafening volume. Sam can barely hear himself think over the noise. Across the room, a costumed group downs their thirteenth shot. 

Jess raises her own glass when Luis comes up to them, dressed like a ghoul.  _ It looks stupid _ , Sam thinks to himself, grinning at his friend. Well, he shouldn’t be saying anything. After all, he’s still not wearing a costume. 

“So, here’s to Sam,” Jess starts, grinning a little drunkenly. “And his  _ awesome _ LSAT victory.”

Sam chuckles and stares at the table, running a hand over the back of his neck. “All right, all right, it’s not that big of a deal, guys,” he tells them. He raises his glass to clink it with Jess and Luis’. 

Jess turns to Luis. “He acts all humble,” she says. “But he scored a 174.”

“Is that good?” Luis asks. Luis downs his shot. Sam copies the motion, relishing the acrid taste of beer on his tongue. He sets the glass down on the table.

Jess nods solemnly. “Scary good.” She grins toothily and raises her own glass to her lips.

“So there you go,” says Luis matter-of-factly. “You are a first-round draft pick. You can go to any law school you want, man!” He takes a seat next to Sam.

“Actually,” Sam says, playing with his fingers. “I’ve got an interview here Monday. If it goes okay I think I got a shot at a full ride next year.”

“Hey,” Jess says reassuringly. “It’s gonna go great.”

“It better,” Sam says, laughing weakly. 

“So,” Luis starts. “How does it feel to be the golden boy of the family?”

There it is.

“Ah,” Sam looks down at his glass nervously. “They don’t know.”

“Oh, no! I would be gloating! Why not?” Luis asks.

“Because we’re not exactly the Bradys.”

“And I’m not the Huxtables. More shots?” 

“No,” Sam and Jess chorus. “No,” Sam repeats, more firmly. Luis walks towards the bar anyway. Jess turns to him.

“No, seriously. I’m proud of you. And you’re gonna knock ‘em dead on Monday,” she tells him firmly. “And you’re gonna get that full ride. I know it.”

“What would I do without you?” Sam asks, gazing down at her dimpled face affectionately. 

Jess feigns thinking for a moment. “Crash and burn,” she says with finality. Then she smiles and leans in for a kiss. Sam returns it.

It’s quick and chaste, nothing big. But Sam relishes it anyway. He smiles against her mouth.

* * *

He’s awoken by a strange crash somewhere downstairs around midnight. Next to him, Jess is undisturbed except for a slight shift of position. It sounds like a window opening. Sam gets out of the bed and looks around the apartment cautiously.

One of the windows in the living room is open. Footsteps sound down the hallway, soft and muted. There, a man, barely a shadow in the faint moonlight, walks past the far end of the hall, breezing by strings of beads. Sam moves silently to another room and waits. The shadowy figure enters the room. Sam leaps at the intruder, grabbing him by the shoulder. The offender knocks the arm away and aims a blow at Sam’s head. Sam ducks. Then the man grabs the same arm he had shot away, swinging Sam around. The world spins for a moment before Sam can regain his balance, but the man has already shoved him away forcefully. 

Sam kicks at the man but is blocked and pushed back again. Grunting with effort, he tries to fight back, but the man’s grip is too strong. At least for a little. Then it loosens. Sam glares at the man against the weak glow of the moonlight. 

But then the man attacks again, elbowing Sam in the face. He keels over, feeling his nose throbbing with pain. He kicks at the figure’s head. The intruder ducks, swinging again. Sam manages to block it this time, holding him back. But the man rams into him, knocking him over. Sam gasps as the stranger pins him to the floor, one hand holding steady at his neck and the other hand grabbing his wrist. 

“Whoa, easy, tiger,” the man says.

Sam lets out a deep huff of air, eyebrows narrowing in confusion. “Dean?” he asks carefully. It brings a laugh out of the man. “You scared the crap outta me, man!” 

“That’s ‘cause you’re out of practice,” Dean says, looking around the apartment. Sam grabs his hand in retaliation and slams his heel into Dean’s back. Dean falls to the floor, Sam pinning him now. “Or not,” Dean corrects himself. “Get off of me.”

Sam gets to his feet and pulls his brother up. “What the hell are you doing here, dude?” he asks Dean. 

“Well I was looking for a beer,” Dean says wryly. He places his hands on Sam’s shoulders and shakes them quickly. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” Sam asks again, unamused.

“Okay. All right. We gotta talk,” Dean says, dropping any hint of sarcasm in his voice. 

“Uh, the phone?” Sam points to a landline sitting on the dining table. A light on the phone flickers slightly. 

“If I’d called, would you have picked up?” 

“Sam?” Jess comes around the corner, turning the lights on. She’s wearing insanely short shorts and Smurfs t-shirt. Sam shoots a look at Dean, who doesn’t notice.

“Jess,” he says. “Hey. Dean, this is my girlfriend, Jessica.”

Dean smiles at her, flashing all 32 pearly whites at her. Sam sighs. 

“Wait, your brother Dean?” Jess asks, still half-asleep. She smiles tiredly. Sam nods slowly, watching Dean grin at her and move closer.

“Oh, I love the Smurfs,” Dean says smoothly. “You know, I gotta tell you. You are completely out of my brother’s league.”

Sam glares at him.

“Just let me put something on,” Jess says, and turns to go. But Dean calls her back.

“No, no, no,” Dean smiles. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Seriously.”

Sam’s going to throttle him.

Dean walks back over to Sam, eyes still on Jess. Sam holds the glare steady.

“Anyway, I gotta borrow your boyfriend here, talk about some private family business,” Dean says. “But, uh, nice meeting you.”

“No,” Sam says quickly, moving to Jess and placing an arm around her shoulders. “No, whatever you want to say, you can say it in front of her.”

Dean shrugs and then looks Sam straight in the eyes, gaze unwavering. “Dad hasn’t been home in a few days.”

Sam shrugs, indifferent. “So he’s working overtime on a Miller Time shift. He’ll stumble back in sooner or later.”

Dean turns his head to the left, bowing it slightly. Almost as if he was conflicted. Or something. Then he meets Sam’s eyes again, except now there’s some urgency to his tone.

“Dad’s on a hunting trip. And he hasn’t been home in a few days.”

Oh.

_ Oh. _

Jess looks up at him, confused. Sam gives her a quick smile. “Jess, excuse us,” he says stiffly. “We have to go outside.”

* * *

“I mean, come on. You can’t just break in, middle of the night, and expect me to hit the road with you.” Sam pulls on a hoodie over his shirt, walking down the stairs quickly. 

“You’re not hearing me, Sammy,” Dean says, his voice lowered. “I need you to help me find him.”

“You remember the poltergeist in Amherst? Or the Devil’s Gates in Clifton? He was missing then, too. He’s always missing, and he’s always fine,” Sam tells him.

Dean stops at this, turning around to slowly. Sam stops close behind him. “Not for this long,” he says. “Now are you gonna come with me or not?”

“I’m not,” Sam says coldly. 

“Why not?”

“I swore I was done hunting. For good,” Sam says firmly. His mind flashes back to four years ago. No. He doesn’t want to think about that right now.

“Come on,” Dean almost whines. “It wasn’ easy, but it wasn’t that bad.” He starts walking again. Sam follows him, trying to catch up.

“Yeah?” Sam asks dryly. “When I told Dad I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45.”

Dean stops again and turns to Sam. “Well, what was he supposed to do?”

“I was  _ nine years old _ ! He was supposed to say ‘don’t be afraid of the dark’!” Sam says, voice rising. He feels warmth rise into his cheeks. 

“Don’t be afraid of the dark? Are you kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark! You know what’s out there.” Dean says, frowning. Almost angrily.

“Yeah, I know, but still,” Sam insists. “The way we grew up after Mom was killed, and Dad’s obsession to find the thing that killed her.”

Dean doesn’t answer. Instead, he glances outside briefly. Sam continues.

“But we still haven’t found the damn thing. So we kill everything we  _ can  _ find.”

There’s a long pause. Sam looks at Dean, really looks at him, and sees the tension in the furrow of his eyebrows, the way he holds his shoulders, the curve of his mouth.

“You think Mom would have wanted this for us?” Sam asks.

Dean doesn’t say anything. He rolls his eyes and opens the door. 

There’s a short staircase from the apartment to the parking lot. Dean climbs it, and Sam follows behind him.

“So what are you gonna do? You’re just gonna live some normal, apple pie life? Is that it?” Dean asks, sounding annoyed.

“No,” Sam says flatly. “Not normal. Safe.”

“And that’s why you ran away,” Dean says, but he’s not looking at Sam. Sam gets the feeling that Dean isn’t even talking to him. He answers anyway.

“I was just going to college,” Sam says indignantly. “It was Dad who said if I was gonna go I should stay gone. And that’s what I’m doing.”

Dean sighs, long and deep. His brown hair glints gold in the moonlight. “Yeah, well, Dad’s in real trouble right now. If he’s not dead already. I can feel it.”

Sam doesn’t say anything, just stares long and hard at his older brother. 

“I can’t do this alone,” Dean says. It sounds very un-Deanlike. 

“Yes you can,” Sam says because he knows his brother better than that. 

Dean sighs and looks at the floor, a ghost of a smile flitting across his face for a moment. “Yeah, well, I don’t want to.” 

Sam sighs and looks at the floor. He didn’t want to. He really didn’t. But Dean… he had never heard Dean ask for help. Ever. From anyone. Especially not Sam; he never had thought Sam capable of hunting well. 

Sam faces Dean. “What was he hunting?”

Dean doesn’t answer. Instead he props open the trunk of the ‘67 Chevy Impala, and then the spare-tired compartment. It’s the arsenal that Sam had grown up seeing, except now it was more full than ever. His gaze passed over the knives, bronze and silver and iron. Then he looked to the guns, rifles and small handheld pistol and one sniper. Dean reaches down and digs through the clutter, looking for something.

“Where the hell did I put that thing?” Dean mutters to himself angrily, sifting through the weapons. Then he goes quiet.

“So when Dad left why didn’t you go with him?” Sam asks, breaking the silence. 

“I was working my own gig,” Dean explains, pushing aside a bag of rock salt. “Uh, voodoo thing, down in New Orleans.”

“Dad let you go on a hunting trip by yourself?” Sam asks incredulously. 

Dean shoots him an offended look. “I’m twenty-six, dude,” he says. Then he lifts a cartridge of bullets to find a stack of papers. “All right, here we go. So Dad was checking out this two-lane blacktop just outside of Jericho, California. About a month ago, this guy.”

Dean hands Sam one of the papers. “They found his car, but he disappeared. Completely MIA.”

Sam reads the paper. It’s from a newspaper, the  _ Jericho Herald _ . It’s titled ‘Centennial Highway Disappearance’, released earlier last month. There’s a photograph of a man called ‘Andrew Carey’, reporting him missing. Sam looks up at Dean.

“So maybe he was kidnapped,” Sam says lamely. 

“Yeah, well, here’s another one in April,” Dean says, throwing Sam another  _ Jericho Herald _ . “Another one in December ‘04, ‘03, ‘98, ‘92, ten of them in the past twenty years.” Then he takes the articles back from Sam and places them in the trunk. “All men, all five-mile stretch of road.” He pulls yet another bag out of the trunk. “I started happening more and more, so Dad went to go dig around. That was around three weeks ago. I hadn’t heard from him since, which is bad enough.”

Sam watches as Dean pulls out a tape recorder. “And then I got this voicemail yesterday,” he finishes, playing it out. 

The recording is fuzzy and full of static; Sam can barely understand anything until his father’s voice plays over the tape. 

“ _ Dean… something big is starting to happen… I need to try and figure out what’s going on. It may… be very careful, Dean. We’re all in danger _ .”

Dean stops the tape. Sam looks at him. “You know there’s EVP on that?”

“Not bad, Sammy,” Dean says. “Kinda like riding a bike, you know that?” Sam shakes his head. 

“All right. I slowed the message down, I ran it through a gold wave, took out the hiss, and this is what I got,” Dean says, pressing play again.

A woman’s voice echoes through the tape, high and soft. “ _ I can never go home _ …”

Sam knows a little bit about what that feels like. 

“Never go home,” Sam repeats.

Dean drops the recorder back in the trunk and shuts it. He leans on the back of the car, looking at Sam observantly. “You know, in almost two years I’ve never bothered you, never asked you for a thing.”

Sam can’t meet his eyes. He looks away, towards the apartment window, where the lights are still on. He sees Jess, her face turned away from them. Sam sighs, turning back to Dean.

“All right. I’ll go. I’ll help you find him,” Sam says heavily. Dean nods slowly. He doesn’t smile. “But I have to get back first thing Monday. Wait here.”

Sam turns back to the apartment when Dean speaks again. “What’s first thing Monday?”

“I have this… I have an interview,” Sam says. 

“What, a job interview? Skip it,” says Dean nonchalantly. 

Sam looks at him. “It’s a law school interview, Dean, and it’s my whole future on a plate.”

“Law school?” Dean says, smirking. Sam bristles. 

“So we got a deal or not?”

Dean is silent. 

* * *

Sam picks up a hook-shaped knife and places it in the duffel bag. Jess comes into the room. “Wait, you’re taking off?” Sam looks up at her. She’s wide awake now. “Is this about your dad? Is he all right?”

“Yeah,” Sam lies. “You know, just a little family drama.”

Sam turns on the lamp sitting on the dresser. “Your brother said he was on some kind of hunting trip,” Jess continues. She sits on the bed while Sam goes through one of the drawers, pulling out ratty old flannel and placing it in his bag.

“Oh, yeah, he’s deer hunting up at the cabin, he’s probably got Jim, Jack, and Jose along with him. I’m just going to go bring him back.”

“What about the interview?”

“I’ll make the interview,” Sam tells her. “This is only for a couple of days.”

Sam walks around the bed. He hears Jess follow him. “Sam, I mean, please,” she says, more seriously. 

Sam stops and turns to her, looking down into her green eyes.

“Just stop for a second,” she says softly. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Sam lets out a forced laugh. “I’m fine,” he says.

“It’s just… you won’t even talk about your family. And now you’re taking off in the middle of the night to spend the weekend with them? And with Monday coming up, which is kind of a huge deal.” Jess frowns, biting her bottom lip lightly. She looks beautiful.

“Hey,” Sam says. “Everything is gonna be okay. I will be back in time, I promise.”

He places a warm kiss on her cheek and turns towards the door, slinging his bag over his shoulder.

“At least tell me where you’re going!” Jess calls after him.

* * *

_**JERICHO, CALIFORNIA** _

A car drives down the highway, its bright headlights piercing through the fog. It’s dark, close to midnight. Inside the car, a young man is speaking into his cell phone. 

“Amy, I can’t come over tonight. Because I’ve got work in the morning… that’s why. And if I miss it, my dad’s gonna have my ass,” he says over the phone. Muffled noises come back through the speaker.

There’s a shrieking whine. The man looks over and sees a woman on the side of the road, on a cliff hanging over the ocean. She’s dressed in white, with long ebony hair. Her dress floats in the wind and she moves with astounding grace as if she were dancing. Then she flickers for a moment and vanishes.

“Hey, ah, Amy, let me call you back?” the man hangs up the phone. He reaches for the radio to turn it off. He presses the button, but it doesn’t stop. He tries again. Same response. He tries several times and then gives up. 

He pulls up next to the woman, whose dress is torn and tattered. The man hits the brakes and leans over the passenger seat to the window. “Car trouble or something?” he calls out to her. 

There’s a very long silence.

“Take me home?” the woman whispers to him.

The man opens the door on the right side. “Sure, get in,” he says. 

The woman climbs into the car, her bare feet just barely skimming the floor as she settles. Her toenails are chipped and dirty. She closes the door.

“So, where do you live?” the young man asks her. 

“At the end of Breckenridge Road,” she replies softly. 

The young man nods. “You coming from a Halloween party or something?” 

He notices the woman’s dress, which is very low-cut. He stares for a moment and then looks away, laughing nervously. 

“You know, a girl like you really shouldn’t be alone out here.”

The woman turns to look at him, almost mournfully, or seductively. Then she pulls her skirt up past her thigh, revealing pale ivory knees and calves. Her thighs are rounded and full and smooth. Almost shining. “I’m with you,” she says. 

The man looks away awkwardly. But the woman grabs his chin and turns his face back to her. “Do you think I’m pretty?” she asks.

The young man nods, eyes stuck on her chest, which is round and full. Light bounces off the tops of her breasts, making them look glossed over. The dress dips down low enough so that the man can see all of the curves of her chest, from the joining of her breasts in the middle to the line of her collarbone. He garbles out a stuttered response to her question. 

“Will you come home with me?” she whispers into his ear.

“Um, hell yeah,” he says and drives off towards Breckenridge Road.

He pulls up to an old abandoned house. It seems to have been vacated years ago because the porch is rotting and almost collapsed. Weeds grow in the yard, untamed and untouched. 

“Come on,” the man says. “You don’t live here.”

“I can never go home,” the woman stares at the house sadly. 

“What are you talking about? Nobody even lives here. Where do you live?” he asks. 

But when he turns to face her, she’s gone. He looks in the back seat, but there’s no one there either. Nervously, the man climbs out of the car and walks towards the house. “That’s good. Joke’s over, okay? You want me to leave?” he calls out.

He looks around him, but the woman has disappeared. Everything is still, except for the fainting humming chirp of crickets. “Hello?” he says, and then repeats himself. 

He peers into the window, stares at a picture of the woman, young and beautiful, and two children. They stare into the camera with smiling faces. Happy. He moves to the screen door and looks in. Then a bird flies at his face and he startles, screaming, and falls back. The man stumbles backward and then leaps to his feet. He scrambles back into the car and drives away from the house.

The young man gets about as far as the bridge when he looks into the backseat. There’s no one there. He catches a glimpse of the rearview mirror.

And the woman is there again. 

The man screams and presses the gas, driving straight through a sign that reads ‘BRIDGE CLOSED’. He manages to hit the brakes about halfway across the bridge and screams.

Blood hits the windows, frightening off a bird sitting on the railing of the bridge.

* * *

Dean walks out of the convenience store, carrying a pile of junk food in his arms. Sam sits in the passenger seat, one leg hanging out of the Impala. He looks through a box of tapes, occasionally reading one. 

“Hey!” Dean calls.

Sam looks up at him. 

“You want breakfast?”

“No thanks,” Sam replies. “So how’d you pay for that stuff? You and dad still running credit card scams?”

“Yeah, well, hunting ain’t exactly a pro ball career, Sammy,” Dean says, placing the nozzle back on the gas pump. “Besides, all we do is apply. It’s not our fault they send us the cards.”

“Yeah?” Sam asks. “And what names did you write on the application this time?”

“Uh, Burt Aframian,” Dean says, getting in the driver’s seat. He puts the soda and chips down. “And his son Hector. Scored two cards out of the deal.” He closes the door.

“That sounds about right,” Sam says. He wrinkles his nose and puts the tape he’s holding back in the box. “I swear, man, you gotta update your cassette tape collection.”

“Why?”

“Well, for one, they’re cassette tapes. And two-” Sam holds up a few tapes. “Black Sabbath? Motorhead? Metallica?”

Dean takes the Metallica box from Sam and puts it in his lap protectively. 

“It’s the greatest hits of mullet rock.” Sam continues. 

“Well, house rules, Sammy,” Dean says, popping one of the tapes into the player. “Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole.” He places the tape box on the floor and turns on the ignition, starting the engine. 

“You know, Sammy is a chubby ten-year-old,” Sam says, watching Dean fiddle with the volume. The radio is blasting AC/DC. “It’s Sam, okay?”

“Sorry, can’t hear you, music’s too loud,” Dean says, smirking, and he presses the gas pedal. 

Sam rolls his eyes. 

* * *

The music continues to play the whole way to Jericho. Sam forces Dean to turn it down when he gets a call. 

“Thank you,” Sam says to the officer and then hangs up, flipping his phone shut. “All right, so there’s no one matching Dad at the hospital or the morgue. So that’s something, I guess.”

Dean casts a sidelong glance at Sam and then fixes his eyes on the upcoming bridge. It’s occupied by two police cars and several police officers, all surrounding another unfamiliar vehicle in the middle. Sam can’t see the blood spatters on it from here. He frowns.

“Check it out,” Dean says, motioning with his head to the scene. Sam leans forward.

Dean pulls the Impala over to the side of the road, next to the bridge. Below them is a steep slope to a small river that passes underneath the bridge, its waters running smooth and slow. The bright sun glares down at them from the sky, beating down on the car’s roof. It’s not warm outside- a breeze whips past Sam. Dean takes a long, hard look at the crime scene. Then he opens the glove compartment as the song on the radio changes. Sam watches him pull out two fake ID badges, both for the police. He takes one and hands the other to Sam, grinning. Sam stares for a moment and then takes the other.

“Let’s go,” Dean says, getting out of the car. Sam follows suit.

They meet Deputy Jaffe on the bridge; he’s leaning over the railing, shouting to a few officers in wetsuits who are scouting the land below. Then he turns back towards the car. The other deputy, Hein, is poking his head into the driver’s seat side. 

“No sign of struggle, no footprints, no fingerprints. Spotless. It’s almost too clean,” Sam hears Hein say, holding his hat in confusion.

Dean walks into the scene like he actually belongs there. Sam follows behind; hunting had been a lot easier when they didn’t look like passable adults. 

“So, this kid Troy, he’s dating your daughter, right?” Jaffe asks his partner.

“Yeah,” Hein replies.

“How’s Amy doing?” 

“She’s putting up missing posters downtown,” Hein tells him.

“You fellas had another one like this last month, didn’t you?” Dean asks them. Sam moves to hide behind him, but Dean shifts again.

Jaffe looks up. “And who are you?”

“Federal marshals,” Dean says, showing them his fake ID.

“You two are a little young for marshals, aren’t you?” Jaffe asks, raising an eyebrow.

Dean laughs and shoots them a billion-dollar smile. “You did have another one just like this, correct?”

Jaffe nods and points north. “Yeah, that’s right. Just a mile up the road. There have been others before that.”

“So, this victim, you knew him?” Sam finally speaks.

Jaffe sighs. “Yeah. Town like this, everybody knew everybody,” he says.

Dean has begun to circle the car, inspecting it. “Any connections between the victims, besides that they’re all men?”

Jaffe shakes his head. “No. Not so far as we can tell,” he replies.

“So what’s your theory?” Sam asks him.

The deputy shrugs. “Honestly, we don’t know. Serial murder? Kidnapping ring?”

Dean moves back from the car and comes to stand next to Sam. “Well, that is exactly the kind of crack police work I’d expect out of you guys.”

Sam stomps on his foot. 

He sees Dean wince. “Thank you for your time. Gentlemen.” Sam tells the confused officers quickly and then turns around to head back to the car. Dean follows behind him and hits him on the head.

“Ow! What was that for?” he hisses at his older brother.

“Why’d you have to step on my foot?” he snaps.

“Why do you have to talk to the police like that?” Sam snaps back.

Dean stops and swings around in front of Sam, forcing him to stop. He twists his mouth into a disapproving line. “Come on, Sam. They don’t really know what’s going on. We’re all alone on this. I mean, if we’re going to find Dad we’ve got to get to the bottom of this thing ourselves.”

But Sam isn’t paying attention; he’s watching the two FBI agents and a sheriff that are coming down the bridge now. 

“Can I help you boys?” the sheriff asks them slowly. 

“No, sir, we were just leaving,” Dean says quickly. The FBI agents walks past them; Dean nods at both of them. “Agent Mulder. Agent Scully.”

Sam groans.

* * *

Sam watches a young woman tack up posters of the missing boy on the outside of a movie theatre. He and Dean are sitting on a park bench across from the building, watching Amy. In a non-creepy way.

“I’ll bet you that’s her,” says Dean, voice low. Sam nods in agreement.

They approach the girl. “You must be Amy,” Dean says politely. Or, as polite as Dean’ll ever be.

Amy nods. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, Troy told us about you. We’re his uncles. I’m Dean, this is Sammy,” Dean fibs. Sam smiles at Amy.

“He never mentioned you to me,” Amy says, eyeing the both of them warily. She turns to walk away. Dean follows her and Sam follows him.

“Well, that’s Troy, I guess,” Dean laughs. “We’re not around much, we’re up in Modesto.”

“So, we’re looking for him too, and we’re kinda asking around,” Sam explains.

Another girl, Rachel, comes up to Amy. She puts a small hand on her friend’s arm and says something to her quietly.

“Hey, are you okay?” she asks Amy.

“Yeah,” Amy replies, shooting her friend a weak smile.

“You mind if we ask you a couple of questions?” Sam asks her. Amy nods.

* * *

Amy takes them to a small cafe just off the main street. It sits across from a high school, which Sam assumes is hers. School’s in session right now; Sam can see the students walking down the hallways through the tinted windows of the brick building. They’re laughing, happy.

The cafe itself is very quaint and picturesque, like something one would picture belonged in a fairy-tale. It has fairy lights strung up across the opposite wall, their little sparkles keeping the room light enough to see. Behind the counter is an assortment of plants, hanging off the walls and sitting on the shelves. There are ficus and small cactuses and flower gardens. 

Amy and Rachel sit opposite from Sam and Dean, both sipping coffee out of petite blue mugs. “I was on the phone with Troy. He was driving home. He said he would call me back, and… he never did,” Amy explains. 

“He didn’t say anything strange, or out of the ordinary?” Sam presses, leaning forward slightly.

Amy shakes her head. “No,” she says, frowning and biting her bottom lip lightly. “Nothing that I can remember.”

Sam’s attention drifts to her neck, to the strange necklace that Amy’s wearing. “I like your necklace,” he says.

“Troy gave it to me. Mostly to scare my parents,” she lets out a small chuckle and continues. “With all that devil stuff, you know?”

Sam lets out a weak laugh of his own and looks at the necklace again. “Actually, it means just the opposite. A pentagram is protection against evil. Really powerful. I mean, if you believe in that kind of thing.” 

Sam sees Dean look at him. “Okay, thank you, Unsolved Mysteries,” he says dryly. He removes his arm from the back of Sam’s seat and leans forward. “Here’s the deal, ladies. The way Troy disappeared, something’s not right. So if you’ve heard anything…” 

Sam sees the girls share a fleeting look. Dean sees it too. “What is it?” Sam asks.

Rachel speaks up now. “Well, it’s just… I mean, with all these guys going missing, people talk.” She trails off awkwardly, staring at the table and blushing.

“What do they talk about?” Sam and Dean ask in unison. Finally, they were getting somewhere.

“It’s kind of this local legend,” Rachel explains. “This one girl? She got murdered out on Centennial, like, decades ago.”

Dean looks at him, but Sam’s still listening to Rachel, nodding along with her story.

“Well, supposedly, she’s still out there,” Rachel says, smiling a little. She doesn’t believe it, clearly. “She hitchhikes, and whoever picks her up? Well, they disappear forever.”

Sam turns to Dean and nods.

* * *

Dean has very little luck with computers, apparently. Sam watches him in exasperation as he types an assortment of words into the search browser, most of them involving ‘murder’ or ‘hitchhiking’ or ‘centennial highway’. He comes up with no results every single time. He watches for another second.

“Let me try,” Sam says after Dean fails for the eleventh time. He reaches his hand out towards the computer.

Dean smacks his hand out of the way. Sam takes it back, frowning from the dull ache. “I got it,” Dean says crankily, turning back to the computer.

Sam pushes his chair out of the way and slides in front of the computer, smiling to himself. “Dude!” Dean says indignantly. “You’re such a control freak,” he mutters.

Sam ignores him. “So angry spirits are born out of violent deaths, right?” he asks. Dean shrugs and mutters something in response, still pissed. “Well, maybe it’s not murder.”

Sam erases the search bar and types in ‘suicide’ to replace ‘murder’. An article pops up. Sam smirks and looks at Dean, just to be a little bitch. Dean pouts. Sam opens the article, which is dated to April 1981. He reads it aloud. 

“A local woman's drowning death was ruled a suicide, the county Sheriff's Department said earlier today. Constance Welch, 24, of 4636 Breckenridge Road, leapt off Sylvania Bridge, at mile 33 of Centennial Highway, and subsequently drowned last night.

Deputy J. Pierce told reporters that, hours before her death, Ms. Welch logged a call with 911 emergency services. In a panicked tone, Ms. Welch described how she found her two young children, 5 and 6, in the bathtub, after leaving them alone for several [minutes]. She reported that their complex-[...]

What happened to my children was a terrible accident. And it must have been too much for my wife. Our babies were gone, and Constance just couldn't bear it," said husband Joseph Welch. "Now I ask that you all please respect my privacy during this trying time."

At the time of the children's death and Ms. Welch's subsequent suicide, Mr. Welch was at the Frontier auto salvage yard, where he works the graveyard shift as an associate manager.

"Connie might have been quiet, but she was the sweetest, most caring girl I ever knew," said Deanna Kripke, a neighbor. "She just doted on those children."”

Sam finishes his story, and there’s a moment of silence before he speaks again. “This was 1981. Constance Welch, twenty-four years old, jumps off Sylvania Bridge, drowns in the river,” He pulls up a picture of Constance. She looks like she belongs in college, she’s so young. Her petite face is framed by beautiful black locks that seem to shine. She’s smiling, bright and happy.

“Does it say why she did it?” Dean inquires. 

“Yeah,” Sam says, scrolling down on the article. 

“What?” Dean asks when Sam doesn’t say anything.

“An hour before they found her, she calls 911. Apparently her two little kids are in the bathtub. She leaves them alone for a minute, and when she comes back, they aren’t breathing. Both die.”

Dean raises his eyebrows and tilts his head. “Hm,” he says, looking at the article. Sam scrolls down a little to find a picture of Joseph Welch, the late woman’s husband, standing on a bridge. 

“‘Our babies were gone, and Constance just couldn’t bear it,’ said husband Joseph Welch,” Sam reads. Dean isn’t listening to him, apparently.

“That bridge look familiar to you?” he asks.

* * *

They go to Sylvania Bridge later that night, when the moon hangs low and heavy in the sky and the grass shines a pale blue from moonlight. Sam follows Dean down the bridge, then stops to look over the railing into the river below. 

“So this is where Constance took the swan dive,” Dean says without feeling.

“Do you think Dad would have been here?” Sam asks, looking over at his brother, who leans over the railing with a frown on his face.

“Well, he’s chasing the same story and we’re chasing him,” Dean shrugs. He turns and continues walking, leaving Sam scrambling to keep up.

“Okay, so now what?” Sam asks him, moving to his side.

“Now we keep digging until we find him. Might take a while,” Dean says, looking at something in the distance, gaze unfocused.

Sam stops in his tracks, putting his hands in his pockets. He stares at Dean, who turns. “Dean, I told you, I’ve gotta get by Monday-”

Dean closes his eyes and nods, smiling grimly. “Monday. Right. The interview,” he says haltingly. 

“Yeah,” says Sam, looking at the floor.

“Yeah, I forgot,” Dean says, smiling a little more. It’s not reassuring. “You’re really serious about this, aren’t you? You think you’re just going to become some lawyer? Marry your girl?”

“Maybe,” Sam says defensively, folding his arms over his chest. “Why not?”

“Does Jessica know the truth about you?” Dean presses. It’s not mean, but Sam still frowns. “I mean, does she know about the things you’ve done?”

Sam grimaces and steps forward, closer to Dean. “No, and she’s not ever going to know,” he says flatly. He wouldn’t make the same mistake that Dad had made with them. 

“Well, that’s unhealthy,” says Dean. “You can pretend all you want, Sammy. But sooner or later you’re going to have to face up to who you really are.” He turns his back on Sam and continues walking.

Sam feels his bottom lip trembling. He sighs and follows Dean. “And who’s that?” he asks.

“You’re one of us,” says Dean, as if it were that simple.

Sam moves to get in front of him, blocking his path. “No. I’m not like you. This is not going to be my life.”

“You have a responsibility to-” 

“To Dad?” Sam snaps, more harshly than he meant to. “And his crusade? If it weren’t for pictures I wouldn’t even know what Mom looks like. And what difference would it make? Even if we do find the thing that killed her, Mom’s gone. And she isn’t coming back.”

The words roll off his tongue with such ease that it scares Sam. They hit Dean like acid and Sam sees him flinch away from his words. Sam curses himself internally; Mom was a sensitive subject for Dean. 

Before he can move, Dean grabs him by the collar of his flannel shirt and pushes him up against one of the posts on the bridge, eyes wide with anger. “Don’t talk about her like that,” he says, voice low and growling. Then he releases Sam and lets him sink to the ground. Sam fixes his collar and rubs the back of his neck where the shirt dug in. He follows Dean. 

Dean stops, looking at something on the other end of the bridge. “Sam,” he says quietly. Sam follows his gaze, eyes landing on the woman from the newspaper, Constance Welch. She’s the same age as she was when she died, but there’s something about the way she holds her body. Sad. Defeated, almost. 

Constance meets their gazes for a few short moments and then turns away from them, facing the river. She takes a few glorious, slow steps and then jumps off the edge of the bridge, plummeting into the water below. Sam runs over to the railing and leans over, Dean coming to his side. But there’s nothing in the water.

“Where’d she go?” Dean asks.

Before Sam can answer, he hears it. The start of the Impala’s engine. He whirls around, just in time to see the headlights flash on.

“What the-” he hears Dean mutter. 

“Who’s driving your car?” Sam asks him. Dean shrugs and pulls the car keys out of his pocket, jingling them quickly in front of Sam. Sam looks at the keys, then the car, and then mutters some choice words. 

Then the car starts moving- straight in their direction. Sam turns on his heel and bolts out of its way. “Dean? Go, go!” he yells to his brother, who’s also sprinting away. But the car is much faster than they are. There’s no way off the bridge- 

Except down. 

Sam jumps over the railing just as he sees Dean do the same. 

* * *

Sam grunts, his fingers struggling for space on the small ledge hanging off the bridge. It’s a crevice in the structure, really, but it’s wide enough that Sam is able to dig his fingers in and find an anchor. He’s hanging off the edge of the bridge, held up by one arm. His muscles strain with effort as he pulls himself up onto the bridge, where he falls flat on the concrete road for a few seconds. Then he looks down into the river below, but there’s no sign of Dean.

“Dean! Dean?” he calls out to the black river below. There’s no response. Sam’s stomach hollows out; he feels bile start to rise in his throat.

Then, something moves in the river, a flash of brown and blue, really. Sam lets out a sigh of relief as Dean comes crawling out of the river, covered in mud and thoroughly pissed off. 

“What?” he yells up at Sam, an irritated edge to his tone.

“Hey!” Sam grins. “Are you okay?”

“I’m super!” Dean replies, holding up his thumb sarcastically. 

Sam laughs and the butterflies in his stomach disappear. He moves away from the edge of the bridge and towards the car.

When Dean does climb up to the bridge again, still soaked in river water and mud, the first thing he does is check on the Impala.

Obviously. 

Sam watches him shut the hood of the car and sit on it, panting. “Your car all right?” Sam asks, amused.

“Yeah,” says Dean. “Whatever she did to it, seems alright now. That Constance chick, what a  _ bitch _ !” 

Sam’s mouth twists into a grim smile. “Well, she doesn’t want us digging around, that’s for sure. So where’s the job go from here, genius?” he asks his brother.

Sam moves to take a seat on the hood next to Dean, waiting for a reply. Dean throws up his hands and lets out a frustrated sigh. Putting his arms down, he reaches to scrape half-dried mud off of his forearms, then his chest, then his face. Sam takes a deep breath and then turns to look at Dean, wrinkling his nose.

“You smell like a toilet,” he tells his brother matter-of-factly.

Dean pouts.

* * *

Dean hands the motel receptionist his fake VersaBank Master Card with the name ‘Hector Aframian’ printed on the side of it. “One room please,” he says. The man at the ledge picks up the card and looks at it, eyebrows knotting in wondering. 

A cold sweat starts to push its way onto Sam’s forehead; the guy was staring at their credit card for a little too long. 

Finally, the clerk looks up. “You guys having a reunion or something?”

“What do you mean?” Sam asks, tilting his head in confusion.

“I had another guy, Burt Aframian,” the man explains. “Came and bought out a room for a whole month.”

Sam raises his eyebrows and shoots a pointed look at Dean.

* * *

Sam swings open the door to the motel room and places the lockpick in his back pocket. He’d move it later; sitting on lockpicks was never a good idea. He reaches out to Dean and pulls him into the room, closing the door behind them. He sweeps the place quickly. The floor, the walls, even some of the ceiling are covered with research; scraps of paper stuck up on a bulletin board by nails inside of thumbtacks, articles and obituaries laying sprawled open on the counter, the bed with grainy black-and-white photographs on it. On the desk and floor, there are books, opened and tossed aside. Sam sees a box labeled ‘hazardous materials’.

“Whoa,” he breathes.

Dean flips on a light switch and picks up a hamburger by the bed, half-eaten. He puts it up to his nose and sniffs, making a face. “I don’t think he’s been here for a few days, at least.”

Sam bends down to look at the floor and the rings of salt that coat it. He observes some of the salt with his fingers. He frowns. “Salt, cat-eye shells… he was worried. Trying to keep something from coming in.” He sees Dean looking at the papers pinned to the wall. “What have you got there?” 

“Centennial Highway victims,” Dean responds.

Sam nods, moving to stand next to Dean. Mark, Durrell, Nifong, and Parks are the names of the victims who disappeared over the years. All males.

“I don’t get it,” Dean narrows his eyes in confusion. “I mean, different men, different jobs,” he says. Sam crosses the room, looking at the other papers. “Ages, ethnicities. There’s always a connection, right? What do these guys have in common?” 

Sam isn’t really listening to him anymore. Instead, he’s looking at the articles that John had placed on the desk. There’s one about the Bell Witch, another about two people being burned alive, a printout of a blog titled ‘Devils + Demons’. There’s even one about a skeletal person blowing a horn at sacred people. But Dad had already figured that one out because at the top of the article he’s written  _ danse macabre _ in messy, rushed script.

He looks through the papers until he finds the one he’s looking for, an article about Constance Welch. It’s an old printout from the Jericho Herald, dated to 1981. On the bottom of the page, there’s a note that reads ‘woman in white’. Sam turns on a lamp.

“Dad figured it out,” Sam says. 

Dean turns to look at him. “What do you mean?”

“He found the same article we did. Constance Welch. She’s a woman in white,” Sam explains. 

Dean looks back at the photos of Constance’s victims on the other wall. “You sly dogs,” he mutters and then turns back to Sam. “Alright, so if we’re dealing with a woman in white, Dad would have found the corpse and destroyed it.”

“She might have another weakness,” Sam suggests.

“Well, Dad would want to make sure,” says Dean. He crosses over to where Sam is standing. “He’d dig her up. Does it say where she was buried?”

Sam frowns. “No, not that I can tell. If I were Dad, though, I’d go ask her husband.” He points at a picture of a thirty-year-old Joseph Welch in the article. “If he’s still alive.” Sam hands the article to Dean and moves to sift through the other notes, but he doesn’t find anything else about the woman in white.

“All right,” Dean says from behind him. “Why don’t you, uh, see if you can find an address. I’m gonna get cleaned up.”

Dean moves to walk away, but Sam grabs his arm quickly, inclining his head a bit. “Hey, Dean,” he says quietly, guilt still gnawing away at his chest with a dull throb. “What I said earlier, about Mom and Dad, I’m sorry.”

Dean smiles and holds up a hand. “No chick-flick moments.”

Sam laughs, nodding slowly. He puts the article down and turns to his brother. “All right. Jerk.”

“Bitch.”

Dean moves off into the bathroom to shower. Sam looks through more of his Dad’s work, looking for any clues to his location. He brushes aside an article about cattle mutilations when something catches his eye.

He picks up the photograph, old and yellowed. It shows them. The family. His father, sitting on top of the Impala next to a younger Dean, who’s wearing a baseball cap. On his father’s lap is a toddler, grinning into the camera. Sam.

Sam stares at the photo for a moment longer, smiling mournfully. He remembers the day that they took the picture; it was hot and it was humid and they were in Texas. Dean had been excited- he had just gotten a new hat that he wanted to show off. Sam hadn’t wanted to take the picture at first, had complained about how it was too hot outside, but John had dragged him out anyway. 

Now Sam was glad he had. Because John was missing and this… this photograph was one of the only pictures of them together he had.

He puts the photo down and picks up another article. 

* * *

Sam paces around the room, arms folded across his chest. He left the message playing, Jess’ voice still ringing through the room, muffled faintly by static and noise. 

“ _ Hey, it’s me, it’s about ten-twenty Saturday night- _ ”

Dean exits the bathroom then. He’s showered and no longer looks like he just crawled out of a rainforest. He grabs his jacket as he crosses the room, shrugging it onto his shoulders quickly. Sam presses the pause button. “Hey, man, I’m starving. I’m gonna grab a little something to eat in that diner down the street. You want anything?”

“No,” Sam says dully. 

“Aframian’s buying,” Dean says, waving the card in front of Sam temptingly. 

Sam shakes his head again. He wasn’t hungry.

“Alright,” Dean says, and heads out the door. 

Sam plays the message again. 

“ _ So come home soon, okay? I love you. _ ”

The phone goes off almost as soon as the message ends.

* * *

Dean sees the officers before they see him. He turns his back on them quickly and pulls out his cell phone, dialing Sam’s number frantically. He puts the phone up to his ear and speaks into it quickly.

“Dude, five-oh, take off,” he hisses to Sam over the phone.

“What about you?” 

“Uh, they kinda spotted me,” Dean says, glancing at the approaching cops. “Go find Dad.”

He hands up the phone quickly and turns when the deputies approach him. He smiles.

“Problem, officers?” he asks, voice sugary-sweet.

“Where’s your partner?” Jaffe asks, face shadowed by his hat.

“Partner,” Dean asks innocently. “What partner?”

Jaffe doesn’t answer him, but he looks over his shoulder and points to the motel room. Deputy Hein walks towards it. Dean grimaces.

“So,” Jaffe starts. “Fake US Marshal. Fake credit cards. You got anything that’s real?”

“My boobs.”

Hein grabs him by the hood of his jacket and slams him face-down against the police car. Dean hisses in pain as they cuff his hands together behind his back. 

“You have the right to remain silent,” Jaffe says loudly.

They take Dean to the sheriff’s office, where they place him in a little room with a big wooden desk. The place is nearly empty, which isn’t surprising for a town as small as this one. The sheriff enters the room, carrying a box in his hands. He sets the box down on the table and sits across from Dean.

“So you want to give us your real name?” he asks coldly.

“I told you, it’s Nugent,” Dean lies. “Ted Nugent.”

“I’m not sure you realize just how much trouble you’re in here,” the sheriff replies, unamused.

“We talkin’ like, misdemeanor kind of trouble, or, uh, ‘squeal like a pig’ trouble?”

The sheriff glares at him. “You got the faces of ten missing persons taped to your wall.”

_ Dammit. _

“Along with a whole bunch of satanic mumbo-jumbo,” the sheriff continues. “Boy, you are officially a suspect.”

“That makes sense,” Dean says drily. “Because the first one went missing in ‘82 when I was three.”

“I know you’ve got partners,” the sheriff presses. “One of them’s an older guy. Maybe he started the whole thing. So tell me, Dean.” He tosses an old leather journal on the table, worn and frayed on the sides. His father’s.

Dean doesn’t reply. For once in his life, he doesn’t know what to say. The sheriff flips through the journal, reading through the old newspaper clippings and articles. “I thought that might be your name,” he says. “See, I leafed through this. What little I could make out- I mean, it’s nine kinds of crazy.”

Dean leans forward for a closer look at the journal. He’s never actually looked inside it before; only gotten little glimpses from when John left it out sometimes. 

“But I found this too,” says the sheriff. He flips the journal to a page, blank except for where his dad’s messy handwriting is scrawled hurriedly across the center. It reads ‘DEAN 35-111’. “Now, you’re staying right here until you tell me exactly what the hell that means.”

Dean doesn’t know what it means.

* * *

The midday sun is hot and bright; Sam squints against it as he walks up to the small house at the end of Parkers Lane. A breeze floats through the field for a second and then dies off. He walks up the porch steps and fixes his collar Sam peers through the chain-link window for a moment and then knocks on the door. An old man comes to answer it, much shorter and rounder than Sam. 

“Hi,” he says amicably. “Are you Joseph Welch?”

“Yeah,” the man responds.

“Could I ask you a few questions?” Sam asks.

“Sure,” says Welch, stepping outside and shutting the door behind him. “What do you want to know?”

He starts to walk down a junk-filled driveway. Sam follows behind and hands him the photograph he had seen on his father’s desk earlier. “Did you see this man?” he asks Welch. “Did he ever… come by?” 

“Yeah, he was older, but that was him,” says Joseph Welch. He gives the photo back to Sam. “He came by three or four days ago. Said he was a reporter.” 

“That’s right,” Sam lies. “We’re working on a story together.”

“Well, I don’t know what the hell kind of story you’re working on,” Joseph says, raising his voice angrily. “The questions he asked me-”

“About your wife Constance?”

“He asked me where she was buried,” Joseph says.

“And, uh, where is that again?” Sam presses.

“What, I gotta go through this twice?” says the old man irritably. 

“It’s fact-checking,” Sam says quickly. “If you don’t mind.”

“In a plot,” Joseph grunts. “Behind my old place on Breckenridge.”

“And why did you move?” 

“I’m not gonna live in the house where my children died,” Joseph says.

Sam stops by an old truck, rusted and dull red. Joseph Welch stops too. “Mr. Welch, did you ever marry again?”

Joseph frowns. “No way. Constance, she was the love of my life. Prettiest woman I ever known.”

“So you had a happy marriage?”

Joseph hesitates for a second. It’s not long, but it gives Sam all the answers he needs. “Definitely,” he says with finality.

“Well, that should do it,” Sam says. “Thank you for your time.”

Sam walks back towards the Impala but stops. He faces Joseph again. He’s on his way back inside. 

“Mr. Welch, did you ever hear of a woman in white?” 

Joseph stares at Sam in confusion. “What?”

“A woman in white,” Sam repeats. “Or sometimes a weeping woman.”

Joseph just stares.

“It’s a ghost story,” Sam explains. “More of a phenomenon, really.” He starts walking back towards Joseph. “Um, they’re spirits. They’ve been sighted for hundreds of years, dozens of places, in Hawaii, Mexico, Arizona, Indiana. All these are different women.”

Joseph keeps on staring. Sam stops in front of him. “You understand. But they all share the same story.”

“Boy, I don’t care much for nonsense,” Joseph grumbles and starts to walk away. Sam follows him.

“See, when they were alive, their husbands were unfaithful to them,” says Sam. Joseph stops. “And these women, basically suffering from temporary insanity, murdered their children.” Joseph turns. “Then once they realized what they had done, they took their lives. So now their spirits are cursed, walking backroads and waterways. And if they find an unfaithful man, they kill him. And that man is never seen again.”

Joseph glares. “You think… you think that has something to do with Constance? You smartass!” he snaps. 

“You tell me.”

Joseph fidgets. “I mean, maybe… maybe I made some mistakes. But no matter what I did, Constance would have never killed her own children. Now, you get the hell out of here!” he yells. “And you don’t come back!”

His entire body shakes and he gasps, turning away from Sam. Sam frowns slightly and sighs. 

* * *

“I don’t know how many times I gotta tell you,” Dean says. “It’s my high-school locker combo.”

The sheriff (his name was Pierce, as far as Dean understood) stands over Dean threateningly. They had been at this for the past four hours. “We gonna do this all night long?”

Then, a deputy leans into the room. “We just got a 911, sheriff, shots fired over at Whiteford Road,” he says quickly and ducks out of the room. 

The sheriff sighs, closes his eyes, and turns to Dean. “You gotta go to the bathroom?”

“No,” Dean says, shrugging.

“Good,” he says.

He handcuffs Dean to the table and leaves with the deputy. Dean sighs and looks around the room. His eyes land on John’s journal and the paperclip sticking out of it. His hands are tied, so he reaches out with his teeth and grabs it. He drops it in his hands and twists it into a lockpick. He’s out of the cuffs quickly and sits in the chair until the sheriff and deputy are out of sight. Then he opens the window and watches the police car take off in the direction of Whiteford Road.

“Sorry boys,” he says quietly. “Amateur hours are over.” He chuckles, grabs the journal, and goes down the fire escape. 

* * *

Sam hits the brakes on the Impala when his phone rings. He answers, relieved to hear Dean’s voice play through the speakerphone.

“Fake 911 call, Sammy?” he asks. “Sammy, I don’t know, that’s pretty illegal.”

“You’re welcome,” says Sam, grinning.

“Listen, we gotta talk,” Dean says quickly.

“Tell me about it,” Sam replies. “Turns out, the husband  _ was _ unfaithful. We  _ are  _ dealing with a woman in white. And she’s buried behind her old house, so that should’ve been Dad’s next stop.”

“Sammy, would you shut up for a second?” Dean snaps. 

“I just can’t figure out why did hasn’t destroyed the corpse yet,” Sam continues, ignoring Dean.

“Well, that’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Dean says irritably through the static of the phone. “He’s gone. Dad left Jericho.”

“What?” Sam frowns, turning a corner. “How do you know?”

“I’ve got his journal,” Dean replies.

“He doesn’t go anywhere without that thing,” says Sam. Odd.

“Yeah, well, he did this time,” says Dean.

“What’s it say?”

“Ah, the same old ex-Marine crap when he wants to tell us where he’s going,” Dean says.

“Coordinates,” Dad usually left them coordinates before going anywhere. “Where to?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Sam hears the rustling of pages on the other end of the phone.

Sam’s frown deepens. “I don’t understand. I mean, what could be so important that Dad would just skip out in the middle of a job? Dean, what the hell is going on?”

Sam looks up from the steering wheel and hits the brakes, the car screeching to a halt. In front of him is the ghost of Constance, standing slumped over. The car goes right through her. Dean’s voice is faint over the phone; Sam must have dropped it in his surprise. 

He breathes hard. He can see his breath in the air, white and misty. Slowly, Sam turns around. 

Constance Welch is sitting in the back seat.

“Take me home,” she whispers.

Fuck.

* * *

Sam doesn’t reply at first. He doesn’t want to. 

“Take me home!” Constance says again, loudly and more forcefully this time.

“No,” Sam replies firmly.

She glares, her gaze ice-cold. The doors lock themselves with a  _ click _ ; Sam jiggles one of the handles but it won’t move. Beneath his foot, the gas pedal is slammed down and the car kicks into motion, speeding away by itself. Sam grabs ahold of the wheel and tries to steer himself, but Constance is in control of the car, turning the wheel by herself too. Sam gives up on the wheel and tries the doors again.

His heart is racing faster than it ever has in his life; he’s been on hunts before, but this was different. This time Dad wasn’t around to help. Dean wasn’t around to help. 

Constance flickers in the back seat, once, then twice. She pulls up in front of an old abandoned house, which Sam assumes is hers. She stares at it sadly. 

“Don’t do this,” Sam tries begging. He was practically out of options. 

The engine turns itself off. Constance puts out the lights. She flickers again, still staring at the house.

“I can never go home,” she says wistfully. 

Sam understands now. “You’re scared to go home.”

He looks to the backseat, but Constance isn’t there. He turns back around just as she appears in the shotgun seat, edging closer and closer to Sam. She climbs into his lap and straddles him, shoving him back against the seat hard enough that his head throbs with a dull pain. The seat reclines backward. Sam grunts, trying to force the ghost off of him. 

“Hold me,” she says. “I’m so cold.”

“You can’t kill me,” Sam spits. “I’m not unfaithful. I’ve never been!”

“You will be,” Constance smiles, her mouth twisting upward menacingly. “Just hold me.”

She kisses him, her mouth cold and hard against his. It’s forced; Sam tries to pull back from it but Constance wraps her hands around the back of his head and pulls him into it. Sam writhes under her, searching for the car keys. He can’t see anything but the spirit, so he closes his eyes and feels around the Impala. Constance pulls back and her face flickers, giving Sam a glimpse of her true form. A distorted version of the real Constance, a monstrous version. Then she disappears.

Sam looks around for a moment and winces in pain. He rips his hoodie open to discover holes burnt through his shirt. Five of them, big enough for fingers. Constance flickers in front of him again and reaches her hand into his chest.

He screams, loud and agonizing. Sam can feel Constance inside him, digging around in his body. He can really  _ feel _ , every cold shiver that goes up his spine, every move of Constance’s fingers, every tease, and every squeeze. It’s white-hot, pure pain; he screams more, louder this time. 

Sam barely registers the gunshot that goes off. Faintly, he sees Constance turn her head and glare at a man in the distance. A bullet shatters the window of the car. Constance vanishes and then reappears again. The man -Dean- fires another round at Constance. Sam gasps for air and then grabs the car keys out of the passenger seat. He turns the ignition on. 

“I’m taking you home,” he growls and presses the gas. 

He smashes through the side of the rotting house and stops. Dean’s footsteps patter behind him as he comes to a halt by the car. 

“Sam!” he yells in. “Sam, you okay?”

“I think…” he grunts and tries to move. Another jolt of pain goes through his body, sharp and definite. 

“Can you move?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, holding his chest. “Help me?”

Dean leans through the window and gives Sam a hand. Sam lifts himself to his feet. 

In the corner of his eye, he sees Constance reappear. She picks up a photograph. Sam can just barely make out what it is through his blurred vision. It looks like a mother and her children. Constance’s, probably. Sam climbs out of the car.

“There you go,” Dean closes the door. 

Sam turns and sees Constance still staring at the photograph. As if she could feel his stare on her (who knows, maybe she could), she looks up and glares daggers of fury at them. The picture clatters to the floor as she snaps her wrist. 

A dresser slams into Sam’s torso, knocking the breath clean out of his. He grimaces, still aching from earlier. It pins Sam and Dean to the car. Then the lights flicker once or twice. Constance looks around, her pale face almost scared. 

Sam hears the rush of water before he sees it. It tumbles down the stairs like a small waterfall. Slowly, Constance walks towards the rotting flight of stairs. Sam squints towards the landing at the top of them and makes out the figure of two children. Constance’s children. They’re holding hands, their mouths moving together slowly. 

“You’ve come home to us, Mommy,” they chirp, voices eerily high-pitched.

There’s a long silence. Constance watches the children tearfully, but when Sam looks up at the landing the children have disappeared.

They pop up behind Constance and hug her tight. 

She lets out a blood-curdling scream, limbs shaking violently. The children hug her until her form melts, along with kids. They dissolve into a puddle on the floor. 

Sam pushes the cabinet off of him and goes to look at the puddle of ghost on the floor, crinkling his nose in displeasure. 

“So this is where she drowned her kids,” Dean says, coming over to the puddle too.

Sam nods. “That’s why she could never go home. She was too scared to face them.”

“You found her weak spot,” says Dean. “Nice work, Sammy.” He slaps Sam on his chest, right over where Constance had reached into him earlier. Pain shoots through Sam’s body for a split second.

Dick.

Sam laughs. “Yeah, I wish I could say the same for you. What were you thinking shooting Casper in the face, you freak?”

“Hey,” Dean shrugs. “Saved your ass.” He turns to look at the Impala, which is still wedged tightly into the hole in the side of the house. “I’ll tell you another thing. If you messed up my car?”

He turns to look at Sam.

“I’ll kill you.”

* * *

Dean pushes the Impala faster than they did on the way here. It’s half-broken from when Sam had crashed through the house. The right headlight is out and the left one is flickering. Dean had called it ‘haunted’. Sam had kicked him.

It was midnight, which meant that Sam’s interview was in the morning. They were really cutting it close with this one.

The California landscape is a blur outside. It’s dark, except for the few streetlights that dot the highway here and there. Dean’s turned the radio up to the max; right now it’s blasting AC/DC. Sam leans his head on the door and looks out in front of him, watching the car drive up and down the rolling hills.

His father’s journal sits in his lap, flipped open to the page with the coordinates on it. He has a map open as well. Sam picks up the flashlight and the ruler, searching for coordinates to 35-111 on the map. He finds it, a small town in Colorado.

“Okay, so here’s where Dad went,” he says. Dean looks over. “It’s called Blackwater Ridge, Colorado.”

Dean nods. “Sounds charming. How far?”

Sam looks at the map. “About six hundred miles.”

“Hey, if we shag ass we could make it by morning,” Dean says. 

Ah. Awkward.

Sam looks at him for a moment and then turns away. He opens his mouth to speak, but hesitates. How do you put something like that lightly?

“Dean, I, um…” he starts. Sam doesn’t even know what to say.

Dean’s eyes don’t move from the road ahead of them. “You’re not going,” he says quietly. 

“The interview’s in like, ten hours,” Sam tells him. “I gotta be there.”

Dean nods. He’s disappointed. Sam can see it in the curve of his shoulders, the tightening of his lips. Guilt blossoms in his stomach and he looks away.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Dean says. “I’ll take you home.”

Sam clicks the flashlight off and looks at the road. The moon looms over them in the sky, bright and round. It hides behind the faint clouds that dot the sky, blocking out the stars. Dean speeds up the car and they drive off.

* * *

Dean pulls up in front of the apartment. He had been silent for most of the ride, choosing instead to turn up the music. Sam gets out of the car and turns back to Dean.

“Call me if you find him?” he asks Dean, who nods. Sam hesitates. “And maybe I can meet up with you later, huh?”

Dean’s stony face breaks into a grin. A real, genuine smile. The first one he’s seen in almost three years. Sam smiles back, spirits lifted.

“Yeah, all right,” Dean says, still smiling. 

Sam pats the door of the car and starts going to the apartment’s door. 

“Hey, Sam?” 

Sam turns back around. “Yeah?”

“You know, we made a hell of a team back there,” he says quickly. 

Sam nods once, smiling at the floor. Dean doesn’t notice, fortunately.

Dean presses the gas and is gone, the taillights of the Impala disappearing around the corner. Sam watches him go, sighing.

That was it. He was done.

He was done. Sam lets it sit and sink in for a moment. He was done. Done hunting for good. He would talk to Dean more. It was going to be fine. He was going to go to law school. He was going to be with Jess. They would find Dad. Maybe he would even get married someday, have kids.

For the first time in a long time, everything was going to be okay. 

Sam grins and half-jogs back into the building.

When he opens the door to the apartment, it’s unlocked. That wasn’t odd; Jess didn’t always lock it at night. Sam usually did. The lights are off and Sam can hear the shower running in the other room. “Jess?” He closes the door behind him. “I’m home.”

Sam steps into the bedroom. On the nightstand there’s a plate of cookies and a small note, written in Jess’ curly handwriting. ‘ _ Missed you! Love you! _ ’ it reads. Sam chuckles to himself. Jess isn’t out of the shower yet, so Sam picks up a cookie and puts it in his mouth, savoring the sugary-sweet taste of it. 

He leans back on the bed, eyes shut.

Something wet drips onto his forehead. When did he get wet? 

It was probably a leak in the water pipes.

Another drop. Then another one. Sam frowns and opens his eyes.

He screams.

Jess is pinned to the ceiling, eyes wide open in shock. She struggles to breathe. Across her stomach is a slash, bright red. It drips onto the bed, soaking it in hot, scarlet blood. Sam gasps.

“ _ NO! _ ” he yells, trying to reach her.

And then the ceiling bursts into flames.

Flames lap across the ceiling. The door bursts open.

Sam watches Jess. He watches her catch flame, her hair burning away, sparking at the tips. 

He can’t move.

“Sam!”

Sam raises an arm to shield his face and screams again.

“Jess!”

Someone comes running into the bedroom, footsteps loud against the wooden floor. It’s Dean.

“Sam! Sam!” he yells and then looks up at Jess.

“No! NO!” Sam doesn’t even pay attention to Dean. All he can see is Jess. Jess, burning. Dying. 

Someone grabs him from behind and drags him out of the room. He screams all the way out, trying to claw his way back. Jess- Jess  _ needed  _ him. She was in danger, she needed him, she was dying. He could save her, he could fix her. 

“Jess! Jess, no!” he yells as the fire consumes her body completely.

The entire room bursts into flames.

* * *

Dean doesn’t remember much from the night his mother died. 

He remembers the fire, and the screaming, and the fire trucks. 

So this wasn’t much different for him.

He sits on the Impala’s hood, watching the fire trucks arrive, their sirens flashing red and blue. There’s another crowd building up, much like the one 22 years ago. And there are police keeping them back, much like 22 years ago. Dean watches for a moment and then walks to the trunk, where Sam is standing. He’s opened the arsenal and is loading a shotgun with rounds filled with rock salt. 

His brother’s face is stony, unreadable. Sam sees him and sighs. His eyes are red-rimmed and tired. He tosses the shotgun back in the trunk and looks at Dean, straight in the eyes.

“We got work to do,” he says.

Sam slams the trunk closed.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> comment below which episodes you'd wanna see.


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